I love this time of year! In fact our weather here in Utah is definitely starting to have that nip in the air in the mornings and evenings and that means that autumn is right around the corner. With fall comes one of the most fun holidays to celebrate—Halloween. Today’s steal, the My Minds Eye Haunted and Blackbird collections are the perfect additions to add to your collection to be ready for all of the fall time fun!

I was so excited about the major cute factor of both collections that I really just started creating cards. I tried to stick to a plan, but I was having so much fun with the papers that I sort of morphed from one sketch idea to another.

Here is the original plan so that is what we will go with for the official Monday Card Madness sketch.

The first card I made I mixed up a little of both collections. I absolutely LOVE the flocking of the Haunted papers and the fun characters of the Blackbird collection.

On the next two cards I put to use one of the super cute border di-cuts from the Blackbird collection.

My daughter, Sarah, even asked if she could jump in on the card-crafting fun and whipped up this cute little number.

I then made another hybrid card using pieces from both collections. Doesn’t the bat border from the Haunted collection work perfectly on this card?

I then realized how versatile the Haunted collection actually is. Even if you aren’t a fan of Halloween, this collection can certainly be used to create some pretty amazing, non-Halloween themed projects.

Yup, it’s official. I think I’m ready for fall!

I guess we are one month closer to the crisp cool air and that means it’s time to do our August card drawing.

So you missed it the first time. You cried because you couldn’t get it the second or third times. Hopefully this time is the charm and today you will be on your way to becoming the proud new owner of today’s steal, the Silhouette SDand accessories.

Any of you that follow the blog, know how much fun I have with my Silhouette. If you recall thefirst time I I explored the basic functions and went a little vinyl cutting crazy.

The second time around I explored the fun of heat transfer and fabric interfacing.

Honestly, can you believe what an incredible little machine it is? Well, I’m about to tell you that I think with some of the add-ons that we are offering this time I’ve had my most. fun. yet!

Welcome to the world of magnet and tattoo paper!

For at least a couple of years I’ve wanted to make a muffin tin advent calendar. The holidays are always such a fun time of year and it’s just that much more fun when you can add a little extra something for the wee ones to help count down the days until the big man delivers some holiday cheer.

To make my advent calendar, I simply found some print and cut designs in the Silhouette store which I liked and re-sized them so that they would cover the opening of my mini muffin cups. Then I printed the designs onto the magnet paper and sent it to my Silhouette machine to cut them out. Now the hard part will be waiting for December to actually use it!

I must admit that I had a fantastic time working with the tattoo paper. My kids definitely had a bit of fun too! Again super easy to do. A quick trip through the Silhouette image store for some print and cut designs, print, cut out and voila! Muscle bling for my boys.

A butterfly for my beauty.

And a little mustache mayhem for me and my little guy.

When I was talking with my friend about alternate uses for the tattoo paper, she suggest trying it out on some candles. What a great idea!

I bet if you didn’t want a Silhouette machine before, you do now!

Oh, and one more thing. Do you remember the giveaway for the Doodlebug Butterfly Lacing Cards a few weeks ago? Jennifer Blomquist is the lucky winner! Jennifer if you can send us your address to service@scrapbooksteals.com we will get those shipped out to you.

You can download and view the app here or it’s always available in the app store when you search “Today’s Steal.” Happy stealing!

* Please note, there is a known bug with Google Checkout that can change the shipping method for mobile device users. If you order from a mobile device Google Checkout will default to the top shipping option. Please check your order confirmation email and confirm the shipping method is correct. If it’s not, email us at customerservice@stealnetwork.com immediately so we can correct your shipping method.

Can you believe that the holidays are right around the corner? Today’s steal, the Basic Grey Jovial 6×6 pad and embellishments would be the perfect addition to your collection to get a jump start on your Holiday cards.

While I’m over the moon thrilled to get to use these papers on my cards this season, I wasn’t quite ready to give up the fact that we still have a few weeks of summer weather left. When I was considering what photos to scrap, I realized that the back to school photos that I took of my daughter a few days ago would work perfectly with the Jovial collection.

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I love how rich the colors are in the papers. Perfect for the feel of my layout. I also love the chipboard letters which are included in the steal. Perfect for adding a title!

The collection comes with some amazing embellishments. I’m quite fond of the lace borders and paper clips.

You have just got to love a collection that is versatile enough to multi-task your projects with!

Now it’s time for this week’s winner! Congrats goes out to Venetia Holbrook.

I absolutely adore her take on the Topaz #5 sketch. Venetia, if you’ll send your address to service@scrapbooksteals.com, we will be happy to send a prize out to you!

Don’t forget that we only have a few more weeks until our next big drawing for the Topaz Club series.

For any of you that have questions regarding Mid Week Mojo you can check out all of the rules and details here. Also, as we continue week to week, bookmark this page for your quick reference to Mid Week Mojo links.

This week for How To’sday we have a spectacular tutorial from Heather Conklin on using all of those fun camera phone pics which have been edited by trendy apps, then printing them square without losing any of their features.

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With the advent of smartphones and those neat apps like Hipstamatic, Retro Camera and Instagram, there is a square photo revolution. For those of us who upload our prints and get our photographs from other sources than a personal printer, it can be difficult to take an awesome square photo, with all of its quirks, and cut it to fit a standard size 4×6 or 5×7.

By some happy chance, I figured out how to use Picasa3 to keep the square aspects of the photo, but make it so that I can upload to my favorite photo printer (Costco, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Walgreens, etc.) All I have to do when I get my photos is cut off the edges into the perfect square!

Step 1: Take your cool square photo and upload it to your computer. Open Picasa3.

Step 2: On the bottom of Picasa is a “collage” button. Click it!

Step three: On the left hand side of the collage section, you can choose your photo paper size (4×6, 5×7, 8×10, etc.) Remember, you want to choose a size that reflects the size of the photo you want. 4×6 would make a 4×4 square, 5×7 = 5×5 square, etc.

Step four: Once you have chosen the size of the photo that will be printed (small area), click on the photo itself. When you do this, a circle with a pull arrow will pop up. Pull this and play around with it until it is the size you want.

Step five: Here the photo fills up white space, except for the edges. This means that the photo will print 4×4. Remember about your neat photo app edges. If you want to keep them, make them fit within the white space.

Step six: Click the box “create collage.”

Step seven: The now “collage” photo should save in Picasa3, but double check. I always save to the desktop, and then delete it once I have uploaded to my printer’s server.

That’s it! Now you can print your cool app photos at your normal printing spots. It’s a little odd that you just made a collage out of one photo, but it works!

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Heather, thank you so much! I’m excited to put my camera phone pics to use in such a fun way!

If you have a great idea that you would like to see featured as a How To’sday tutorial, be sure to send photos and instructions to kristy@stealnetwork.com.